Neighbors win housing dispute

Rachel Gordon, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, July 11, 1995

1995-07-11 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- It took more than a year, but finally Marc Duffett thinks City Hall listens.

Monday, he and a group of neighbors near the San Francisco Zoo successfully lobbied the Board of Supervisors to revise plans for a new housing development on the last undeveloped patch of property along Ocean Beach.

The supervisors bucked the Planning Commission and made neighbor-suggested changes to the proposal. The upshot: The project at 2900 Sloat Boulevard will have 28 units rather than the proposed 33. Instead of being four stories tall, it will be three, and there will be no garages fronting busy Sloat. Instead, they will be in the back, accessible from 47th Avenue.

To make room for the garages in the back, the board agreed that The City's policies regarding the size of back yards and the amount of open space could be decreased.

"I have a lot of mixed emotions about it because I think it's a bad project to begin with, but the compromise is a lot better than we could have gotten," said Duffett, who owns the nearby Ocean Park Motel and led the fight against the development.

After being rebuffed by the Planning Department and the Planning Commission, Duffett said, "I am very grateful we have a system that allows neighbors to bring their grievances to the Board of Supervisors."

The original scope of the project would have been out of character with the neighborhood, which is mainly made up of two-story structures, opponents said.

Developers Bill Ferdon and Neil Kelly, working under the name of KFS Co., plan to build single-family homes on the property that sits across from the zoo. The site is slightly larger than half an acre.&lt;